Drugstore Cowboy

Gus Van Sant’s Drugstore Cowboy is a road movie on opioids.

One of those cult classics well worth investigating even if you have never so much as smoked a cigarette in your life.

All the actors are used expertly, but it's Burroughs, cropping up near the end, who articulates the film's sociopolitical moral in a contemporary context.

No previous drug-themed film has the honesty or originality of Gus Van Sant's drama Drugstore Cowboy.

Though hardly earth-shakingly original, Van Sant's low-budget movie takes a cool, contemplative and sometimes comic look at American drug-culture.

The film takes us so deeply into this shabby, transient world that we feel its texture -- both its scary thrills and its bleak, fatalistic uncertainty.

Drugstore Cowboy understands the pleasures and release that drugs can give people, and also how it finally bottoms out their souls.

In all, Drugstore Cowboy has a few highs, but generally, this is a light dose of viewing valium.

Drugstore Cowboy offers a deeply moving and profoundly beautiful film.

A frazzled, dangerous and dark comedy-drama.